New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has pinned blame for a rise in the city’s crime rate on the theft of wildly-popular Apple iPhones.

Mr Bloomberg made the comment in a weekly radio address delivered after the New York Police Department reported 3484 more major crimes had been committed in New York in 2012 than in the previous corresponding period.

The number of Apple products reported stolen in 2012 – 3890.

“If you just took away the jump in Apple, we’d be down for the year," Mr Bloomberg’s press secretary Marc La Vorgna said.

Mr Bloomberg, meanwhile, said that thieves appeared to have a preference for Apple products, although he did not include thefts of competing gadgets in his count. The New York Times also reported that the mayor had advice for owners of iPhones.

“Put it in a pocket in some sort of a more body-fitting, tighter clothes, that you can feel if it was – if somebody put their hand in your pocket, not just an outside coat pocket," Mr Bloomberg said.

According to the NYT, the New York Police Department has used decoy officers and other measures to try to crack down on iPhone thefts, which often take place on subway platforms as trains enter and leave stations.

But while the overall crime rate was up in New York, in part due to Apple thefts, figures for some more serious crimes improved. The homicide rate, for example, is on track for its lowest record annual total with just 414 homicides reported in 2012. The previous low of 471 was set in 2009.